Tuesday, August 2, 2011

A few days ago, again CNA reports another rosy unemployment rate of merely 2.1%, a slight increase of 0.2% from the previous month. Unfortunately, PAP's released statistics are only as good as fantasy. Looking at PAP's data over the pass decade, our unemployment rate reported by PAP (Singaporean cum PR) swings between 2-3.5%. Meanwhile, even the World Bank, which is well-known for massaging unpleasant figures, report our jobless rate above 5% most of the time, in the past decade.

I estimate that the true unemployment numbers for Singaporean is probably closer to 8-9%, and that does not take into account of under-employment. Singaporean are living in a desperate situation.

How the manipulations is done
There are beliefs among well-informed people that unemployment figures are adjusted lower via fraudulent interpretations of raw data. Looking at the fine prints upon released of statistic, one often see suspicious lines such as "seasonally adjusted"......etc.

Besides, it is well-known that governments in many countries do not account discouraged workers as unemployed. In simple terms, when somebody cannot find a job within one year, for example, he is taken out of unemployment statistic. The reason given by government is, that person is no longer interested in looking for employment. The only explanation of divergence between PAP's data and World Bank, is the existence of the above mentioned manipulations.